A beautiful place offering splendid vistas from nearly every angle, Berchtesgaden is a haven for nature-lovers, as well as for skiers, and anyone criss-crossing the complex lifelines of history. Today it is a place for rock-climbers and anyone looking for time to spend enjoying the solitude of nature, where splendor is everywhere. Some of the most stunning mountain drops in Bavaria are here, and the Berchtesgaden hotels are specially designed to highlight the magnificent views along with the comfort and hospitality of nature. It has a very complicated and rather fascinating history, and some of the pieces of the 20th century have only recently come together.
But Berchtesgaden is much older, having been mentioned as early as the beginning of the 12th century as a place famous for salt mines. As the centuries passed, and history passed through it, more nations became interested in it, and it had a name for being a kind of painter’s paradise. It certainly is that today, attracting wildlife and nature artists from all over for its spectacular imagery, and calm atmosphere. It also attracted one of the most infamous painters in history, Hitler himself, who had a summer home here during the war. It’s hard to know what attracted that painter here, but we do know what he liked in art, thanks to the heroic efforts of John Pistone, who was with the U.S. military when they came through here at the end of the war.
He grabbed an album in the house of the fuhrer, which has since been demolished, thinking that it was a photo album. Recently it’s been discovered that it is one of the 13 volumes of art planned for a museum in his hometown in Linz, Austria. That particular museum had an awful lot of plans, none of which came to light, and today, visitors in Linz can take underground tours where they will occasionally exhibit incredible installations of art curated to remember the holocaust, underlining the way the angel of history can sometimes pause for a moment of grace, like a moment of reflection in a forest in Bavaria.
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